Sometimes pause is a good thing! I was flying about yesterday making sure to get a few things done.

I help a friend take a look at an extremely nice Harley Davidson since that is what he was looking for,and it was cutting it close to futoor. And I was on my bike too so I flew back home, and I was enjoying the ride. And like usual there is a line of cars parked on the road in Mishref, and a police with his lights on parked on the other side. I was in a hurry so I was flying down and pretty much didnt care what the guy was going to do.

Then I parked the bike cleaned it up real quick, wiped my helmet down and put everything back in the closet. Flew up stairs took a quick shower and changed into a dishdasha. And was heading out to my family’s house for futoor. The roads were empty it was fantastic, we got there and everyone was eating. I sat down and grubbed. I felt that my brain was slowing down. It was great seeing family, and towards the end of the night they brought my nephew. And he was in shock and just looking around at other people, and people were talking some kids were crying. It was sensory shock for him, but after a bit he held out his hands and wanted me to carry him. It was pretty funny.

Then everyone was going their seperate ways. I headed home, and relaxed and some of my friends were coming over later in the evening. It was pretty chill. I was playing around with my Infrant NV while I was waiting, but I ran into problems which I will deal with at a later point.

Then I went down and I was playing with the XBox 360 while I was waiting for my friends to show up. And I was enjoying myself when they made me stop playing. hehehe! We watched a movie and laughing about he was doing what. And how Ramadan has thrown our schedule out the window, then we had some za’atar, cheese sandwichs, small pizzas, laham bil ajeen (meat sandwich), kubbah, and samboosak. We watched a pretty good movie it was good night. For some reason I stayed up pretty late so getting up for work was a little difficult! hehehe!

You know when you have one of those days where you dont have enough time to just stop and breath. Tuesday was one of those days. Where at one point I was so tired and out of it that my brain was paused. I think it was paused because people were talking and I was looking and I felt like I was out of the room. After futoor I passed out for a little while even though I woke up I was still dazed. The one thing that made me really happy today was playing around with my nephew. He woke me up from my asleep after futoor by banging on the window so I woke up with the smile. And I think he know that his uncle is probably the only person who is goofy enough to entertain him.

I took him outside on the balcony for a little while and he was enjoying himself.  Just watching cars flying by, and motorcycles going back and forth. He was facinated by the sound of the motorcycle that woke him from his sleep. It was an off-road motorcycle that a guy was riding back and forth on the street. And he was keeping any eye out for anything making noise. I was watching the cars and watching him watch the cars! It was fun just standing outside like that.

Then after futoor didnt get much rest, I had to think about a lot of stuff that my family was asking me. And when you have to do a lot of things you just feel like the day has not ended yet. I got a call from my friend from the states when I drove out to Khalid Bin Waleed street in the city to pick up a new head set, because mine has reached its end. It seemed like he was on the other side of the world waiting for their time for iftar and he was having the same type of day. We just started laughing at ourselves. By the time the conversation was done, I already finished what I had to get and got home and he left work early to watch a movie before futoor. Its hard watching a movie without popcorn. What a day!

Home:

I took the speakeasy speed test which is pretty accurate, and this is what I got for a 1.5Mbps connection with Qnet at home.

Laptop:

Its a pretty cool test!
Link: SpeakEasy

After trying to find help here, I had no choice but to send the drive to the states.

I sent the HD to DriveSavers, because it seemed they were my only hope. After sending the drive through fed-ex, they contacted me telling me they recieved it.

Then a couple of hours later they contacted me, asking me to call them. So I did, i was hoping for good news and the gentlement I spoke to sounded like he had bad news. When he was talking to me it sounded as if he wanted to tell me someone died, but the hope of getting my information back was totally lost. The feeling really sucked, that I lost a lot of photos, music, and video. But Mostly its the photos that I lost that are annoying me. But I have learned to back-up everything! And I will! At least I know some places that I could get some of the pictures but not everything.

Well a lot has been lost, but lesson learned.

Now Im back to square one for a bit. Im happy I found a good amount of music on my mp3 player, and I have a good amount of music on my laptop. Im also going to ask my friend to burn his music to a DVD and send it to me from the states, because we have the same amount and same taste. And then I am downloading huge amounts from Torrent at this point. About 60 – 70 GBs worth of anime, and a couple of GBs worth of new tv shows. The one thing that I cant recover is pictures of my family and friends. But at least I have some copies of it, so its not all lost, but still extremely frustrating.

I had plans earlier in the day to go to the gym or go riding since the waether is improving and I wanted to get healthy again. I feel overweight and I realized that I am overweight! hehehe! I was 92 Kg back in June, and now Im 101 Kg. When I saw that I didnt have a bad reaction or anything, but I did have some ice-cream and it was late at night and I didnt real care that much. But I do realize that I need to drop the weight so I will do that. Im crossing my fingers!

Back to the day, I went to work and got stuck in traffic for 55 minutes and got in late to work. Everyone seemed a bit out of it. I had some paperwork to do and check up on some work. By 1pm both me and my co-worker felt like zombies and our brains were shutting down. It was the funniest look, I really didnt feel functional at all.

At 3pm exactly I got in my car and headed home, and on my way home I saw about 4 different accidents just like everybody else. I saw one accident that seemed pretty funny that two taxis bumped each other and they just sat in their car waiting for a police office to come. It look pretty funny, and both of them didnt have a care in the world.

I got home and all that time my headache was getting worse and worse by the minute. I took of my headgear said hello to my mom and laid down on the couch in the living room. We were having futoor at my grand mothers house, so it was a matter of waiting.

Then when we headed out the streets were empty. It was amazing, there was no car on the road. I could count the number of cars in front of me on my hand while I was driving, it was great. When we got there it was almost time to break our fast. So we just waited about 15 mins and prayed before eating. Then I thought I should watch what I eat because I need to go out. That went out the door when I was sitting in front of the food, I ate like my stomach was a bottom-less pit! I ate until I couldnt breath. It felt fantastic! I didnt leave anything on the plate and no food was left on my plate! And Im not a sweets type of guy. I think sweets is a whole meal on its own, I was so stuffed that I couldnt talk and my family was laughing at me. All I could do was sit in my chair and smile.

Then I had to go to my other grand-parents house to say hello to the rest of the family and it was great seeing a lot of people. But I was feeling tired, so after that I decided to head home and relax. I think I will have lebnah sandwich for suhoor, and a cup of yogurt with honey. I was told that its good for you and you wont feel that thirsty the next day.

I hope everyone else had a good first day in Ramadan what ever you did. It seemed there were a lot of motorcycles on the road today. I just hope they arent idiots on the road, or idiots riding the motorcycles.

After riding back home I had a good lunch with my mom, thinking that this is going to be one of the last meals I have during the day! hehehe! I like Ramadan because I can get a few more things done during the day, and even if Im hungry I can keep doing what Im doing and think about food later.

After lunch I packed my bag with a few things, and a couple of DVDs getting ready to head out. Called the guys asking if they needed anything from the co-op before I headed over. So I went over and picked up a few things. And head over, and got there in about 40 mins taking my time. When I got there they told me we will be bbqing some burgers, I told them if it isnt fresh beef that I should make the patties with it wont be that good. We watched the first movie from the bunch but wasnt impressed. Then everyone was getting hungry, when the meat came we started bbqing or two of us were while everyone else ate! It was pretty funny, with music playing in the background the weather was amazing.

I was tired from an early day, then the guys started doing different things. Some guys were talking, some were playing cards, and others just running around doing something. I decided to hit the sac early and watch some movies. I watched one movie which wasnt too bad and then I started watching Rome the series again which was amazing! I finished disc 2, and I knew I had to finish it this week! I started it before I left for the states, but then I knew I had to finish it this week! Too much that I need to do! hehehe

I passed out, and got up next morning. Everyone was really lazy since they stayed up. It was funny just relaxing.  Slowly everyone was getting up, and everyone was getting hungry. One of our friends was bringing food from home, so we were waiting for his driver to get here, but like usual he didnt give him the right directions and got lost! It was very funny, but really entertaining! It was a full house and a good get together. After lunch some of us went for a swim and some guys were watching a few movies.

After swimming for an hour and a half I jumped in the shower. After I got out I had the warm fuzzy feeling, and slightly dizzy. It felt good, and so I was heading home cruising at 120 kph not having a care in the world. Just staying in my lane and good music flowing with windows down. That felt amazing with the weather temperature at 34C. It was very nice.

Then I got home and said hello the family, and people seemed busy so I took my Rome DVDs to the basement and continued watching. I wasnt going to have dinner but when I found out it was Ramadan I decided to have some Kabab-Ji and that felt good. That I relaxed with my mom for a few hours and passed out getting ready to go late to work! Nice to be at work at 10:00am.

For some reason everytime I see Molly Ringwald I end up remembering Pretty in Pink. I just her picture for some reason and it brings back memories from summers in london, and the other year I was going through a small closet and I found that I still had the VHS version of Pretty in Pink! And I still had Transformers the movie from the 1980s in its original case.

I was remembering some actors from the 80s and then I remembered facts of life! I remember that show and I liked Nancy McKeon the most. I thought she was really hot. I must have liked brunettes since I was a kid. I always thought the blonde characters annoyed me! hehehe!

Then I kept thinking that alot of actors from the 80s just fell of the map, and then I remembered movies from the early 90s that I remember foundly. And two movies that automatically popped into my head is Dick Tracy and The Shadow. I remember both show so foundly and the other day I saw Dick Tracy on tv and I just kept watching and I couldnt believe that Al Pacino was in the movie and I didnt remember that. Then last week on cable tv while I was in the states the Shadow was playing on tv while we were relaxing and I couldnt help watching it and enjoying it thuroughly!

Got to work early this morning around 7:45am, and yesterday left around 5:00pm. Long days, its been crazy here since Ramadan is coming up. Its like nothing will happen during Ramadan and they want to squeeze everything out of the next few days. They want to send me to Germany tonight, but they are not finding any availability at any hotel. I really dont want to travel right now, but I will if I have to.

Getting to work already tired is probably the worst. Its going to be a long day!

So when I left kuwait! I was in such a hurry that I didnt make a list this time, and just went with what ever I could remember! It was hectic to say the least. And even when I was leaving the US it was the same thing. I think I enjoy last minute packing sometimes, and just going to the airport.

Here is the funnier part of forgetting. I didnt want to look my tickets until the night before my flight. But what turned out to be even funnier, with all the guys hanging out at my friends place for a night good bye was that my flight was on tuesday september 12th at 2pm. And I looked at it, and just started laughing, and when I told my friends they thought I was in idiot! But we still kept eating the Chinese food. It was late enough that I could call the travel agents in Kuwait to get me on the plane on Wednesday so I would be in Kuwait by Thursday. So everything went through lucky for me.

But when I left Kuwait I forgot the GSM chip to my US phone, so I got a new one when I got there. I just went to Tmobile and they gave me another chip for my cell phone line. It was pretty funny that I took care of it from the first day since all I wanted to do was ride my bikes while waiting for my friends to get off work.
Now that Im back I remembered that I forgot one important thing! And that is some of the dvds that I bought, and more importantly music CD holder which I left in my truck! I will have to ask one of my friends to send that to me. What a trip! And still more stories to come!

I know some people who have gone through this, and Im the one who is always preaching about back-up and it has happened to me. One of the Hard Drives on my computer has failed! Western Digital Hard Drive Failure! Its a four year old hard drive which had all the latest videos, music, pics, and personel stuff.

The problem that I had is that the HD failed the day I was flying to the states so I couldnt even have access to my anime that I have stored up. But what is driving me nuts is that all the pictures of my Nephew are stored on this Hard Drive, and Im going to do everything possible to fix it. The guys in Hawally didnt open the HD because he said it sounds like a Head Crash and they dont have the tools to fix it, which I appreciate him telling me. So now I have to send it to drive specialists to deal with this mechanical failure. And from what I read you have to be very careful with it, and the faster you deal with it the better the chances of retrieving the data. Even though I was gone for two weeks the HD wasnt moved, so Im going to send it to DriveSavers to see if they can get things back for me since they had good customer feedback. I have to have my nephews pics back!

The funny part is that I ordered an Infrant ReadyNAS NV two weeks before, but it seems it didnt arrive soon enough. Its just my luck but Im hoping for the best, and I hope people back up most of their data. I will setup the Infrant NV and post pics about it later, and I will keep you updated about what DriveSavers say they can do.  I have most of my stuff backed up, its just the items from the last 6 months that I didnt back-up, but now Im going to back up on a monthly basis so it wont happen ever again! (I hope)